Persuasion techniques and examples to improve conversion

'You say tomato we say tomayto', 'c0mmunication breakdown', 'do you speaka my language', 'my baby’s gonna write me a letter'........? It’s funny how song lyrics, when paired with a catchy melody are easy to remember, bulging with emotive meaning.

How easy would it be, fellow webmasters, if there was an easier way to mainline understanding between a website and its target customers? Without the need to carefully group masthead, hero banner, top navigation, product description and call to action button?

The truth is web design and written text are like an arranged marriage. They barely know each other, they’ve never met and then suddenly there they are sharing a bed (or a webpage) for the next however many years.

Top tips for persuasive design

Page composition is often decided way before the body copy has been written - or vice versa. This rarely makes for a persuasive experience.…

Blending personas and personalities to increase conversions in email marketing [Part 1]

It’s a well-known fact that some of the greatest results can be gained by combining personalisation and persuasive architecture to deliver what the customer wants. In this 2 part post I will look at approaches to leverage 2 types of buyer personas to use to increase conversions within your email marketing programme. When combining both of these buyer persona styles we’re ensuring that we deliver not only the copy, TOV, and offers/merchandise that our buyer wants and expects from us but we’re also delivering the experience that will enable them to convert according to their temperament. So let’s look at the two different types of Buyer Personas. For clarity's sake, I’m labelling them differently to how they’re labelled elsewhere: Persona: This addresses the motivation (i.e. what the buyer needs, what are their challenges and goals, what motivates them  etc) Personality: This addresses their temperament (i.e…

 New research on consumer feedback on buyer omnichannel fulfilment requirements

Value: [rating=3] Recommended link: Comscore and UPS's 2013 Pulse of the Online Shopper survey ComScore was commissioned by UPS  to survey over 3,000 US consumers, to find out about their online shopping experience and the impact of the range of channels now available to the consumer. The research looks at the consumer journey from pre-purchase, to check out, delivery and post sales. It provides insight into how businesses need to adapt to consumers expectations of an integrated sales experience and the focus on the customer experience. 'Overall, satisfaction with online shopping is high at 83%. However, it drops below 50% when shoppers are asked about: flexibility to choose delivery date; ability to choose a specified time of day for delivery of purchase; flexibility to re-route packages; and a green shipping option' Key…

Research examples of measuring email marketing effectiveness using attribution

Sometimes email is a victim of its own success. It works so well to drive revenue across all channels but this cross channel revenue is rarely calculated accurately and attributed to email. Why is this? Possible because email is the cheapest of the channels and it is shown to work without having to pull together all possible revenue. Basic stats prove email works.  However, every channel is competing for budget and has to be seen to improving over time so maybe it is time email got its fair share of the pie. An unpublished study by Alchemy Worx for one of their clients over a 10 month period to monitor revenue on days with and without sending any emails.

The charts shown in this article and all the data behind it is taken…

7 examples of online merchandising

Online merchandising is an ever-changing task and the following examples highlight some current methods but are by no means exhaustive. Central to most of them is the idea of giving the customer the opportunity to choose the direction their visit will take; whether that might be choosing a trend, narrowing down the products they see or choosing their own add-on products. Or in other words: Personalisation. Using browsing history, trend data or customer data, these retailers are able to deliver a different experience for different user groups or indeed users. With so many different options available it would be easy to be overwhelmed; so here are 7 examples from great ecommerce websites of online merchandising execution.

1. Collection pages - example from Dunelm

A common problem faced by lots of retailers selling online is how to sell multiple products from the same range. This is especially true for …

How a new analytics company use Branded Swag to integrate the digital and physical marketing worlds

How big is your stockpile of branded startup T-shirts? Chances are most of them are collecting dust somewhere in the back of your closet. This is problematic for two reasons. The first is that the swag, which was meant to be a means of branding and exposure, is not doing it’s job. It’s burning a hole in the company’s pocket. The second: seemingly every startup handles production of their swag the same way; by simply giving it away, but startups are supposed to be different and disruptive by their very nature. Careless swag management is irresponsible for any company; but it’s particularly problematic for startups that often work with a very limited marketing budget. The Office’s Michael Scott, the world’s best boss, said SWAG is 'stuff we all get' and…

Slides, videos, white papers, design galleries, articles and more (+ five quick tips)

Q4...one number and a letter that has heart racing at retailers everywhere... There are lot of great sources to help you with your Christmas and year-end email efforts. In this post I have summarised what I see as the best of the bunch to help your planning & preparation, strategies & tactics, and email design. (Be sure to read through to the end for some quick bonus tips, too.)

Preparation and planning:

Useful articles and white papers: 19 holiday email planning tips A month-by-month guide to holiday marketing success Email marketing holiday planning calendar from ExactTarget and a checklist from Silverpop: [slideshare id=24996872&doc=emailmarketingholidaycalendar-130806132952-phpapp02&w=500] [slideshare id=5390145&doc=holidayemailmarketingchecklist-101008004627-phpapp01&w=500]

Strategies and tactics:

A selection of ideas, examples and screenshots: The retail email guide to the holiday season (from 2012) The Top 12 marketing tips for the holidays 10 holiday gift…

An example of Holistic Email Marketing

Here’s a taster of what you can look forward to on October 8th at the free International Digital Marketing Summit  from Plan To Engage. It’s a free summit held At Your Desk, so why not register? If you can’t make it on the day, register anyhow and view the sessions on-demand. In my session: 'From Search to Conversion: 3 keys to a successful customer journey' we will be addressing the below tactic. When we think of the words ‘personalise’ and ‘email’ we more often than not think of including the subscribers name and possibly their Company name within the email. But this is the most basic of ways of personalizing the experience within email and quite frankly, impresses very few. Personalisation can be achieved numerous ways by utilising the following types of data: Explicit data such as filling in a form Implicit data…

New Verdict research for retailers

Here we're sharing new e-commerce findings by Verdict, who surveyed over 10,000 on-line shoppers to reveal a forecast that the 'UK’s e-retail market will grow by almost 50% over the next five years to reach £50bn by 2018. One pound in every seven will be made online'.

Something that I found interesting and surprising from the research is that

‘Only 4% more people considered store shopping more enjoyable than online, a gap that’s lowered since the 25% recorded 18 months ago'.

The report highlights some other interesting findings about buyer behaviour:

35-54 males prefer Internet buying.Mobile consumers are savvy enough to know that they will only buy from a trusted, secure network as expected.Smartphones and tablets are used by consumers in-store to research prices and product details. 41% research in store before they purchase online.67% of respondents still shop from their ‘living room’ – second screening…

Assessing how the latest technology trends can support the sales process

Mobile, social, Cloud and Big Data are converging, with the sales department seemingly sat directly on the nexus point. Not only are these mega-trends impacting sales behaviours, but also sales technologies. Mobile, social, Big Data and Cloud are influencing the entire sales force automation (SFA) ecosystem, from sales opportunity management (contact management, sales forecasting, lead distribution, etc), sales effectiveness (prospect qualification, proposals/contracts, order management, etc) and sales performance management (objectives/quota management, territory management, etc). With such widespread influence, sales teams that harness these forces have the potential to significantly improve their business results. 'The trends help the sales leaders address the perennial issue of how to make salespeople more productive, while the next generation of sales tools also mean you can have deeper insight about your customers – know which ones to call, be able to qualify leads better, be able to enter…